scout

i drew this to send to my cousin at boy scout camp, so in a way it is based on a true story.

built

i don't think i've ever tried this hard to draw a building before. i usually just realize that i don't know what i'm doing and give up. though the result is modest, i have no choice but to consider this a raging success.

the blue team

i rewrote the plot of my g.i. joe story a little today, so my major bludd analogue sort of ended up changing allegiances, which necessitated a change in color palette.

afro-american panther

here is my coworker vince, and inspired by his renewed interest in black comic book characters, my version of roadblock from g.i. joe and a few black panthers.

captain gore

here's my take on cobra's major bludd:

hey ladies

new character designs for some of the female characters.


(not drawn to scale.)

henchmen

on the left is a new pose of the standard henchman. the other 2 are an initial design and a revision of an elite henchman of some kind. the version in the center looked a little busy to me.



and here is a doodle that illustrates how the different components of the helmet might work separately, and offers our nameless henchman a moment to enjoy a cold beverage.

zipatone

ever since i read wizard's "how to draw: advanced techniques" comic, i have been curious about using something called zipatone, a page of tiny, equidistant dots that you can cut into shapes to simulate gray shades in 2-tone comics. in the old days, i guess they were forced to use this stuff, but some people still do because it has a cool effect.

today i realized that i could do it the easy way by making my own digital page of zipatone dots in photoshop.

back from the drawing board

another round of potential zartan costumes. they're based on the generic henchman uniform i made yesterday, but with a couple of alterations that let you know he is someone important.



i think i will adapt the real zartan's facepaint (or whatever it is) and hood by giving my version a skin condition that makes him sensitive to sunlight. that would explain the hood, and i can explain the eye makeup as some kind of grease paint that prevents a painful glare when he has to go outside.

general issue

today i thought a little bit about what my cobra soldiers would be wearing. i need to blend the iconic henchmen uniforms from the g.i. joe cartoon with something with a little more basis in the real world. the biggest challenge will be the helmets, as cool-looking helmets and practical ones seem to be mutually exclusive.

i started by photo referencing some SWAT team and military gear from real life, and was happy to see that some troopers really do wear faceplates.


this is the same blue i chose for zartan's pants, thinking that maybe he wouldn't be as different from the other troopers in my version as he was in g.i. joe, aside from the non-regulation hoodie.

this dark red circle was intended to be a stand-in for a cobra-like logo that i would design later, but now i'm thinking it looks pretty good.

$10 hoodie from target

i drew zartan here to practice and to get a feel for what stood out about him so i could translate the character for my own story. this first attempt is clearly not unique or memorable enough. plus, i'd really like to figure out some way to represent the face paint without just copying it.

i'm going to take a second pass at zartan sometime soon, and that version should hopefully be a happy medium between the ludicrous costume with so much personality and the real world equivalent with none.

starting with some fancy boots.

a panel!

this is not an official panel, just a practice run. i made this to test out some things i've never bothered to teach myself about real-life comic book making. most of the comic strips i've made in the past have used tiny little panels with speech bubbles worked right into the inked art, leaving only enough room for a short exclamation. i needed this experiment to figure out how much space i'd need to leave for a little bit of real dialogue.


not bad for my very first digitally lettered panel, i think.

(these characters are-based-on/are hawk and duke.)

can't think of a pun for the title

the friday meeting is dead. long live the monday meeting.

on the docket: fan art for "will power," created by vince white. vince has been getting excited again recently about drawing a will power comic book, and even showed me some page layouts. i'm showing you some doodles:

also pictured: character designs for a comic i want to write, which would be an analogue of "g.i. joe" action figures, an homage to my own childhood imagination as much as the toy or cartoon.

characters i intend to honor with analogues include:
roadblock > except fatter, and with more facial hair.
snake eyes > except he shows his face and talks too much.
hawk > except battle-scarred.


somehow i still haven't mastered army helmets.